“I called that Shield shoddy. If it belongs to you, then indeed, I called your equipment shoddy.”

“You’ve got some nerve, gal!” The buff man before me wasn’t just buff. Calling him muscular would be quite the insult to his magnificent physique. Any single muscle on his bulky frame was quite easily heftier than my entire bodyweight. I didn’t need to think about it for more than a few seconds to realize that the man was clearly a blacksmith, and since the store in front of us had large iron signboard that proclaimed “DreAn the Blacksmith”, I could only assume this was DreAn. After all, he looked like a blacksmith should look, especially in an Isekai world. Muscular? Check. Bald? Absolutely. Bearded? You know it. And even if I didn’t have all the other context clues in front of me, he was wielding a hammer that looked like it would work just as well for bending metal as it would for cracking skulls.

So yes. Ellem had managed to pick a fight with a particularly brusque looking blacksmith by insulting his trade. And now that he’d made a scene of it, there was no way for him to back out of it easily. After all, DreAn had staked the quality of his goods and craftsmanship by making this a public affair. And while I liked Ellem well enough, I didn’t want to leave a tense situation up to her. I hadn’t yet leveled up Everywhere, All At Once enough to be able to get a look at her stats, but CHA was not her strong suit. In fact, she was about ready to let the blacksmith know where he could put his patriarchal attitude and his terrible shield, and if she had her way, it wouldn’t be comfortable. So of course, I had to butt in.

Well, taking care of the messes your underlings made was clearly part of the responsibilities that came with being Upper Staff (I didn’t have a System assigned word for it yet, but Ellem, Chanak and Baldric formed the Understaff, so I figured I was probably Upper Staff.)

“Ah, apologies Sir. My companion here is…an amateur, and clearly misunderstands the value of your assuredly fine work.” Lay on the charm. Flattery tends to work best when faced with an opponent that doesn’t appear to have more than a couple braincells to rub together.

“I am most certainly not-“ I didn’t know if Ellem was going to protest more strongly against being called foolish, or against the shield being given the moniker “Fine”, but I decided to interrupt her again.

“Please excuse her, and we shall be on our way.” I grabbed Ellem by the shoulders, and applying just a little bit of pressure, began to direct her away. Hopefully the bowing and scraping would work, even though it was getting old.

In all honesty, there was a part of me that was getting steadily more and more annoyed at the level of obeisance I had to show to every random yokel in Excelsia. Being humbled by Aastor or Fay was one thing….but this guy? This guy? I mean, in any other Isekai World, DreAn would be begging me for my patronage. Of course, nothing he made would be fit for a Chosen One, but still…I didn’t want to be contemptuous, but DreAn was weak. I mean, he was physically stronger than I was, but he was weak compared to what I used to be. Weaker even than Aastor or Fay; I wasn’t sure if Aastor or Fay were actually strong, or if the gap between our skills was part of the System’s artificial trickery. Still, I had instructions from Aastor not to reveal my Spark, and I didn’t want things to spiral. I had quests, I had tasks, and I’d done this whole thing before. Keep your head down, do the quests, get strong, and enjoy not being in the direct line of fire. No need for shenanigans.

“HEY! Where do y’all think you’re going?” Ah, DreAn wasn’t as keen on an amicable parting as I was. “You don’t get to just walk away after calling my work into question.”

“I think we do. We have done nothing wrong.” Ellem spoke in a quiet but steady voice. I could sense her anger, directed partly at me and partly at DreAn. “I may be new here, but I do not believe that there is a law against puncturing an overblown ego.”

Dammit. This was going to devolve into a market brawl. And I wasn’t ready for a market brawl.

“New?” DreAn took a second to process this new information. Perhaps the high density of muscles was making it harder for thoughts to pass through his head, because he looked dumbfounded for a second before realization struck him. “Oh. You’re Summoned.”

His lip curled at the thought, and he screwed up his face, as though there were a stench about him. And then, casually, as though it was the expected response, he drew in a breath. “Pthew.”

Oh. Oh no, he did not.

He did not just-

Somewhere, deep in my brain, a voice shouted out that what I was feeling was irrational. I’d known Ellem less than 24 hours, and even though I enjoyed talking to her, we were not close. In fact, we were barely acquaintances, and if she hadn’t lost her memory, our first interaction would have been robbery and kidnapping. The same went for Chanak and Baldric: I didn’t have strong feelings for them. Rationally, I knew they were simply ways for me to expand my options for the upcoming adventure. They had useful skills and knowledge that I needed, and beyond that, I would be keeping my distance from them as much as possible. I didn’t need to add in more ghosts for my nightly rotation, and the best way to avoid that exact situation was to refuse to be vulnerable with any of them. I could trade barbs, I would engage in conversation, and if they thought of me as a companion because of it? All the better.

But I needed to keep my distance, because one way or the other, I would be leaving them.

And yet…I mean, it had to be because of Isekai Hero. I didn’t know which specific abilities or combination of abilities was causing this reaction, but it was a strong reaction. Perhaps Everywhere, All at Once had some kind of hidden property that caused me to be strangely protective of my Understaff. Maybe as a Butler, I was prone to reacting strongly to any perceived insult towards my Master. Maybe I just didn’t want to kowtow to this overgrown, musclebound, dunderhead.

Whatever the case: DreAn had spit on Ellem’s face, and my immediate instinct was blind, murderous rage.

The problem, unfortunately, was that I didn’t want to fight this guy. At least, I didn’t want to fight him on his terms, out here, in the open. There were a lot of issues with charging headfirst at him and trying to gouge out his eyes or strike at his throat.

First, I still did not have my skills. My best guess was that I would have to earn them all over again. Maybe Isekai Hero V2.0 had hidden all my old skills, or had transferred my expertise into Stat Growth, or something completely different. Or maybe it was a true System Wipe, and I had to start from scratch. I had always relied on the System for Skills, using Skill Points instead of just training them. After all, it was easier, and more streamlined: Isekai Hero would more or less guide my hands, showing me where to strike and helping me get there. Now that I didn’t have that kind of guided aid, I was suffering a little bit.

Secondly, the man clearly wanted us to fight him here. We probably looked like easy pickings: Ellem was tall, and looked strong, but nothing compared to this man. And my physique had always been slender, even when I was wielding enough strength to move a mountain. Moreover, we were Summoned: I didn’t know if there was a law against a Summon fighting an Excelsian citizen, but I certainly did not want to find out. I needed to conduct a lot more research into the legal niceties of Excelsia before I would feel comfortable confronting the Courts.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly: We had gathered a crowd. A small crowd, since the market was large and noisy, but a crowd of nosy onlookers nonetheless. I could visualize, fairly easily, running up to DreAn and quickly striking his temple a few times. My DEX was above average, and I could likely dodge any blows he threw my way. Even if I missed the temple exactly, I could still likely do some damage. After all, speed and technique were just as important as raw strength in a fight, and raw strength was worse than useless if it wasn’t accompanied by some measure of finesse. So yes, some part of my rusty mind was slowly waking up after a few months of hallucinating on Grimmar, and coming back to terms with the reality of battle (I had spent the majority of my time on Grimmar eating fruit on a beach, and trying to be as unconscious as possible.) But even so, even if my mind could come up with a plan, I couldn’t trust my body to carry it out. And I couldn’t trust that the onlookers wouldn’t choose to help a so-called honest Excelsian over some Summoned ruffians.

So, even though every fiber of my being wanted to find a way to slit this man’s throat…I couldn’t do so yet. Not in public, not in the middle of the day, not with witnesses. Still, there’s more than one way to devastate someone.

“Ah, I do have a question. If you would just bear with me?” I tried to arrange my face into an expression that wouldn’t betray the amount of anger I felt at DreAn.

I shot Ellem an encouraging look, and pulled out the kerchief that had been nestled into my breastpocket. In the process, I did manage to wake Kel up, but I was also able to impress upon her the urgency of the situation: She was not to get out of my pocket. I could tell she was about to make a noise in agreement, so I had to amend those instructions: Stay hidden, and stay silent! I could practically feel the squeak die in her throat as she curled up and….went back to sleep. I guess sleeping accomplished both my commands, so I couldn’t be mad.

“I won’t be answering any questions from no filthy Summoned!” DreAn roared out, having fully thought through what I’d said. He looked to the crowd for approval, nodding at the exceeding wit of his reply. “You hear me, Summoned trash?”

God, I wanted to kill him. But in due time. Humiliation first.

“Of course. No questions. But I assume your goods are for sale?” I could see greed wrestle with his natural disgust of Summoned. Could he really sell to someone who had just insulted his wares? I was afraid that Drean wouldn’t make the correct decision, unfortunately, so in order to hurry him up, I opened my coat just a touch, showing off the bulging pouch. “And of course, I’ll pay exactly what your goods are worth.”

I hadn’t forgotten that I’d apparently unlocked the Haggling skill. But just to double check, I opened up my profile and made sure to take a look.

—————————————————————————————————————

Name: Blanc

Level: 3

Physical Stats:

STR: 15 (D) | VIT: 15 (C) | DEX: 28 (S)

Mental Stats:

WIS: 15 (B) | WIL: 15 (A) | INT: 23 (S) | CHA: 15 (S) |

Class Specific Stats:

Intuition: 2 (S)

Skills:

Basic Haggling: 30 (2X CHA multiplier)

—————————————————————————————————————

In Isekai Hero, Skills were essentially cheats. Having a skill meant that you would automatically be better than the average person at that particular task, simply because the System, with it’s limited Omniscience, would help you out. The words I said would come out clearer and firmer, my intuition on the price of goods would be a little bit more accurate, and I would just seem more trustworthy when I claimed I knew what I was talking about and told DreAn that his shield was awful. But just in case, I decided to check the specifics of the Haggling skill.

—————————————————————————————————————

Skill: Basic Haggling

Skill Points: 30

Paying what people ask for is a good way to end up penniless. Leave those feelings of shame and embarrassment for the Church: In the Market, haggling is a ritual and everyone must participate.

Haggling is a skill that activates whenever a bargain related to goods is being struck. This involves a complete exchange of goods, services or other items of monetary value. Haggling helps you Identify specific features of an item being haggled over.

Basic Tier: 2x CHA Multiplier

Advanced Tier: 2.5x CHA Multiplier

Expert Tier: ???

—————————————————————————————————————

Precisely what I expected. The System, for all it’s faults, was actually quite intuitive at times. Haggling was simply haggling. My CHA was average, at 15, but my haggling skill was….well above average, effectively at 30 thanks to my CHA stat. I had not yet figured out the exact mechanics of Stats, and especially hadn’t had time to go through the tutorial that explained the numbers in any detail. However, before V2.0, the numbers went all the way to 100, and 30 was generally considered to be some level of expertise.

Which meant that my plan to humiliate DreAn was well and truly underway.

“What they’re worth? They’re worth more than you can afford, Summoned.”

“Is that so? Then perhaps my friend and I can make a recommendation to our master.” I smiled at Ellem. Hopefully she understood where I was going with this. “Shall we haggle?”